The Fall Read online

  A month ago I overheard Mum on the phone in her bedroom. She sounded kind of weird so I went to the door and listened. I realised that she was speaking to Harry, asking if I could come stay for a week after my operation. I sat in the hallway, back against the wall outside Mum’s room, and listened to their conversation. She only spoke to Harry every couple of years as far as I knew, usually about money. He was a little bit late in his child support payments. Nine years.

  The last time Harry was in my life I was still in my mother’s belly so I don’t remember him too well. Mum never mentioned him and he wasn’t exactly trying to kidnap me to get custody. I think Mum thought I’d be better off without him. But this time, she was stuck. She couldn’t afford to take time off while I was home after the operation and she wasn’t leaving me alone to get into more trouble. She kept saying that she was ‘over it’. Over me.

  When she was on the phone to Harry she said, ‘This past year he’s been behaving so out of character. He’s been just like you. Impulsive. Never thinking of anyone else but himself, like the universe revolves around him. You need to get involved in his life. Speak to him. At least show him what happens to selfish, inconsiderate people when they get old.’

  Harry had said something then. It may have been ‘thanks’ or something more aggressive.

  ‘He needs a father,’ Mum told him. ‘A male role model.’

  Harry argued – I could hear him raise his voice – and Mum told him to step up and be a man. ‘Grow a pair,’ were the words she used. Then she hung up.

  It was nice to feel loved.

  Magic and I made it to the second-floor landing and I stopped to rest my skinny arms. I pushed the dog’s overgrown backside to the floor and gingerly touched my armpits, which were rubbed raw from the crutches.

  As I pushed her down, Magic’s feet slipped and her entire body flattened to the wood. I wondered if I should have left Magic in the apartment. But if the man came back up in the lift, what would he do to her? I thought of the black umbrella shifting to the side and the man’s eyes looking up at me through the crooked tree branches. That thought drove me down the last two flights of stairs.

  I stopped in the small foyer at the entrance to the building. The room was dimly lit and had the same dark timber on the walls as my father’s place. The front door was straight ahead. I could exit onto the street and go to the police station a hundred or so metres from here. But I needed to know what happened to the man who fell. What if he was still alive now but by the time I got back from the cops he wasn’t?

  I turned right and moved quickly down a narrow corridor towards a door that had a green ‘EXIT’ sign above it. I figured it opened onto the backyard of the building. I pressed my ear to the door. It felt cold on my skin. I heard nothing from outside.

  I would just take a peek, then I’d go to the police. I eased the door open, the bottom of it scraping loudly on concrete. I pushed my eye to the gap and peered into the backyard. The bin shed was pressed up against the building, sulking in the gentle rain. It was covered in dead brown vines and smelt bad even from a few metres away. It stood between me and where the man had landed beneath the leafless tree. Above it was an expanse of pink-lit cloud, no stars.

  There was no sign of anyone in the yard. Police hadn’t arrived. Was it possible that no one else had heard the strangled noise of the man falling? Or the sickening thump of him hitting the ground? Or had they? Maybe, in a city, when you heard something like that, you closed the blinds and ignored it, tried not to get involved. Maybe you learnt not to care.

  Close the door and go to the police. Or go back upstairs.

  But the apartment didn’t feel safe now either. The man had looked right at me. He knew what I had seen. Maybe he went up in the lift. He was probably outside Harry’s door at this very moment.

  I needed to know if the other man was alive. People could survive big falls. I had seen it in a Ripley’s Believe It or Not book in the school library – a Ukrainian woman who survived a seventeen-storey fall because she was asleep. It helped if your body was very relaxed. But the guy who fell from the sixth floor had sounded tense and nervy, not relaxed at all.

  I pressed my ear to the crack of the open door. Moan of garbage truck, squeal of brakes, noisy clashing of bins being collected. That noise seemed to go on all night in the city. There was a siren, but in the distance. No sounds from within the small yard. I took a deep breath, pushed the door open some more and squeezed out into the rain. Magic followed. I let the door rest gently against the lock, making sure it didn’t click shut. I scanned the courtyard. The only movement was from one enormous moth dive-bombing the security lamp. A moth should not be out here in the rain and cold.

  There was a broken toy gun on the ground a couple of metres away. I thought about taking it with me for protection but it didn’t look very realistic. I wedged it in the door to make sure it didn’t close.

  I stayed near the brick wall of the apartment building and crutched slowly, silently towards the dead-black shape of the bin shed.

  FOUR

  THE BODY

  I dodged around a bike chained to a clothes line and a crushed pot plant that must have fallen from a windowsill or a balcony. Kicked by one of the men? My crutches sloshed in small puddles and cold rain trickled down my neck and back. Magic strained at her collar, excited to be outside in the rain and breeze. I moved quickly to the door of the bin shed and peeked inside, alert for human shapes. The shed was about three metres wide and four metres long. It was empty. The wheelie bins must have been out in front of the building, lined up on the kerb.

  I crutch-crept across the cracked pavers on the floor of the shadowy shed. Wind flurried outside, rustling the dead vines above and blowing a shiver right through me. Magic made a strange, high-pitched whine and I stopped for a moment, loosening my grip on her lead.

  This is the dumbest thing I have ever done, I thought. And, according to Mum, I had done some pretty dumb stuff recently.

  This is so typical of you, Sam. Even when she wasn’t with me, her voice was there. Can you please, just once, try to do the right thing? Make. Good. Choices!

  I made it to the doorway on the other side of the shed. I had a clear view of the ground beneath the tree where the man had fallen. The patchy grass was painted with the knobbly shadows of tree branches, but the body was gone. The man had either crawled away or someone had taken him. It seemed to me that his crawling days were over, so that left only one possibility.

  I spied a narrow driveway at the side of the building – just wide enough for a vehicle and blocked by a tall double gate. I had seen the caretaker’s dirty ute enter the yard through there earlier in the week.

  I prayed that Magic would bark and bite rather than lick and sniff if we came upon the large man under the black umbrella. I eased my way out into the starless night, moving slowly towards the place where the smaller man had landed. I looked behind me and left and right but there was no sign of life.

  I stopped and leaned heavily on my crutches. I pushed Magic’s bottom down again and the dog fell, spread-eagled in the mud, like a bearskin rug.

  I thought about how my father might investigate a crime scene like this. I was pretty sure that’s what it was. Someone had pushed that man and then taken the body in the time it took me to get downstairs. I had never been at a crime scene before.

  God is in the details. That was number one in ‘Harry Garner’s Ten Commandments of Crime Reporting’, an article that had been published about my father in the Herald a couple of years ago. I had the clipping folded up in my wallet and I read it all the time.

  God is in the details. Don’t miss a thing, I heard my dad whisper to me. I had been probing him about his work all week. He’d told me that there are a couple of key things he focuses on at a crime scene in order to describe it clearly for his readers: Photograph and document the scene without contaminating it. Take note of any obvious physical evidence, like weapons or footprints; and biological evidence, like blood,
hair and other tissues.

  I noticed small, dark spatters on the grass – either mud or blood. I took a shot on my phone. It made a loud ch-kshhh sound as it snapped and I flicked it to mute. There was a shallow depression in the dirt where the man had landed, the weight of his life etched into the earth. I felt tears prick my eyelids. I swallowed hard, leaned down as far as my leg would allow and took a couple of shots of the hollow in the ground.

  I touched the earth and wondered who the man was: if he’d had kids, if he left any mark on the world other than this one in the backyard of a shabby apartment building in a pretty bad part of the city.

  I picked up a small piece of paper from the ground. A receipt, wet through from the rain and impossible to read. Magic yawned excitedly and looked as though she wanted to eat it.

  Maybe it was evidence or just something that blew out of a bin. I took a photo and pocketed the receipt carefully, so as not to tear it. As I straightened up, there was a dull thud somewhere nearby.

  I probably should have run but instead I froze, not breathing. I waited for a shadow or a voice. Seconds ticked by. No other sounds. I looked up at Harry’s apartment, the window still ajar. I half-expected to see someone looking down at me. I scanned the other windows and bal conies. All of them were closed against the cold and rain. I turned my attention to the ground once more.

  I wondered if I had compromised the crime scene. Maybe the hoof-prints of my crutches had destroyed vital evidence.

  Something glinted in the lamplight a couple of metres away. I moved closer, careful not to tread on the man’s indent. It was the arm from a pair of glasses. I picked the evidence up by the very tip, trying not to contaminate it with my fingerprints, and slipped it into my pocket.

  There was a sound and I looked up to see one of the large gates at the side of the building begin to open. I panicked. ‘Magic, come,’ I whispered, pulling the dog to her feet by her lead. I crutched awkwardly towards the door to the apartment building.

  What if it’s help? I wondered. What if it’s Harry? That’s what would happen in Harry Garner: Crime Reporter, my comic book series. I had been making the books for three years and I was up to issue seven. I wasn’t that good at drawing at first but I was getting better. In the books, Harry always saved the day. Or the night.

  But I was not in a comic book and I wasn’t taking any chances. I imagined Death shadowing me as I lunged with my crutches, reaching ahead and swinging my legs forward. Magic waddled double-time to keep up. A couple of metres before I reached the door to the building I launched my crutches forward, smelling safety, and they slipped in the mud, sending me sliding onto the ground. I broke my fall with the palms of my hands and my bandaged right knee. Pain surged through me and I lost my grip on Magic’s lead but fear picked me up and sent me hopping to the door. I opened it and the plastic gun fell out onto the mud.

  ‘Come, girl!’ I pleaded with Magic. ‘Come!’

  She ambled over, squeezed through the gap and I eased the door shut behind me, the bottom of it grating against concrete. I crutched down the narrow corridor to the foyer. I should have gone through the double doors and directly to the police station. But I didn’t want to be out on the streets of an unknown city, hobbling on crutches at 2.30 in the morning. What if the man had an accomplice who was waiting out front?

  I eyeballed the lift that my father had strictly forbidden me to travel in. It was waiting there, calling me. My arms were tingly and numb, the top of my crutches cutting the blood flow, and I was wet and cold. I didn’t know if I could make it all the way upstairs and I was 94 per cent sure that Magic couldn’t.

  I thought of the person coming through the gate in the backyard. I was pretty sure it was the creepy man with the umbrella, so I swung my leg forward and pulled the heavy old-fashioned lift door open. Magic shuffled in and I crutched after her into the tiny space, the smallest lift I had ever been in. I hit the ‘5’ button and prayed that I was doing the right thing.

  The lift didn’t move so I tapped the button ten times in quick succession like it was my Xbox controller when the game wouldn’t load. Finally, it reeled upwards. I watched through the wire mesh window as the floors slowly, painfully drifted by. I wondered if I’d have been faster crutching up the stairs, if the man would walk up and be waiting for me at the top.

  Why didn’t you go to the police? I thought over and over, the question rattling and squeaking through my brain like the lift through the shaft.

  After what felt like an hour we arrived at level five and the lift made a soft, out-of-tune ding. I peered through the narrow window in the door, looking left and right. I couldn’t see anyone. Only the doors to 5A and 5B and, in between, the fire hose reel cupboard. I wondered if he had already called the lift from the foyer. Just in case, I pressed the button for every floor so that it would take forever to get down. I shoved open the door and Magic waddled out. I crutched across to Harry’s apartment, inserted the key and twisted. Magic pushed the door open with her nose, barrelled past me and slurped water noisily from her four-litre ice-cream container on the kitchenette floor.

  I clicked the door quietly closed, my chest burning, feet freezing, listening for dear life. Magic collapsed to the floor. Her breathing sawed through the air, making it difficult to listen for the lift or for noises on the staircase.

  ‘Shhhh,’ I told her, but the chubby brown dog kept wheezing.

  I called out ‘Harry?’ and checked the bedroom and bathroom again. Then I stood, watching the door for a couple of minutes, listening. I checked my phone.

  Nothing.

  Harry will be back soon, I thought.

  I’ll just pop out and grab some milk. That’s what he’d said. I shouldn’t have asked him all those personal questions. I’d sent him away. It was my fault.

  I heard the distant sound of a timber door grating on concrete five floors down.

  FIVE

  THE CUPBOARD UNDER THE STAIRS

  I clicked the cupboard door closed and sank into the darkness. The space was narrow, deep and reeked of cleaning products. The mouldy smell of wet mop cut through the chemicals. My nose twitched. I squeezed it to stop myself from sneezing and felt the sting across my cheeks and forehead. Magic panted, her heaving breaths filling the cupboard. The building’s heating system moaned all around. It was the most obvious hiding spot in the world, I knew that – right opposite our apartment, beneath the stairs next to the lift.

  The pain just above my knee was apocalyptic and my hands and armpits ached. I started to complain to myself about my broken body but I stopped. I had learnt to do that. It was easy to whinge all the time but it didn’t change anything. Kids don’t let you forget that you walk funny. My spine was bent and my left leg was 5.5 centimetres shorter than my right. That’s why Dr Cheung had inserted the staples into my right leg last week, to slow the growth of the thigh bone. He reckoned it would allow my left leg to catch up, correct the dogleg in my spine and make me normal. I was scared of the surgery but scared of what might happen to my body if I didn’t have the surgery. Knowing that I was coming to Harry’s for the week after the operation had helped me push through the fear.

  I heard the lift clanking up through the shaft and soon it arrived on our floor. The door screeched open. There were fast footsteps and a thump. I pressed my ear to the thin cupboard door. Another thump, louder this time. And one more, then something clattering to the ground. It sounded like he had forced Harry’s apartment door.

  I imagined him moving across the lounge room, past my sofa bed and into Harry’s room, and I felt sick and angry.

  Just soften, Mum would say. You don’t always have to be on the attack. What’s got into you? You’re acting like a teenager.

  Well, guess what? I am one. Almost.

  I would turn thirteen tomorrow.

  Something fell to the floor in the apartment. A book or ornament. Harry didn’t have many. Cupboards were opened and closed. Maybe someone else would hear it, too. Maybe one of the neighbours woul
d come. Or Harry. Maybe he would come home.

  After a minute or two the muted thuds and bangs eased. I clamped Magic’s snout shut to quiet the panting. She tried to shake her head from my grip but I wouldn’t let go.

  The floorboards on the landing squeaked again as the man moved out of the apartment. He stopped. I could imagine his eyes resting on the cupboard door under the stairs. Magic’s breathing would give us away. Saliva dribbled out of her soft, warm mouth onto my hands but I held on.

  I had a flash in my mind of the man looking up at me from five storeys below. I balanced on my chopstick of a left leg and silently shifted my grip on the crutch. I held it low and tight so that if the man opened the door I could deliver a hard, fast blow right up under his nose. I had never done anything like that before but my characters did that stuff all the time. It was easier to be violent with a pencil than it was with a crutch. I wondered if a blow like that could be deadly. I hoped not. I didn’t want to hurt anyone but I was pretty sure that the man did not have my best interests at heart.

  Shhhhh-shhhhh-shhhh-shhhhh, said Magic’s nose, then I heard the grind and pop of floorboards as the man walked, slow and cautious. I felt the board beneath my foot rise gently. Maybe he was standing on the other end, pushing my end up like a seesaw. Could he feel my weight? The resistance? He coughed a big, meaty cough, and I felt the vibration of it along the board and up through my bare foot. I was all fear. No flesh or bones or breath. Pure fear. He knows I’m here. He knows.

  I heard what sounded like two sprays of an asthma puffer. The floorboard lowered. The man moved off, suppressing another cough. I heard a door open nearby. A neighbour? No. Maybe the fire hose reel cupboard opposite the lift. He was checking in there. That meant he would check in my cupboard, too. He would be silly not to. I clutched that crutch handle like my life depended on it, because it did.

  There were footsteps. The lift door screeched open, closed, and then it started moving off, down through the building and away.